


The Bar At The End Of The World

by Jessicamariek



Category: Dissidia Duodecim: Final Fantasy
Genre: Drinks, Friendship, Gen, spacetime shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 18:32:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1658270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessicamariek/pseuds/Jessicamariek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lightning, Tifa and Laguna figure out how to get back in the fight - and overcome brain freeze - after the attack on the Rift. DOINK! 2014 gift for Zen_Monk</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bar At The End Of The World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zen_monk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zen_monk/gifts).



> I loved the idea of them getting together for drinks after the end of the game. Thanks for such a fun prompt!

Lightning hadn’t been sure what would happen after the end of their suicidal assault on the Rift.   
She certainly hadn’t expected to wake up at home, though.  
 _Home_ – and she realized with a shock that she had all her memories back, not just the scattered, fractured pieces that had made their way back to her mind during the battle. She remembered this house, this room, this overstuffed couch with the silly flowers and Serah’s collection of throw pillows, one of which was squished under her cheek. Lightning raised her head off the tasseled pillow and sat up, looking around her. The house was the same, the same pale wallpaper and old furniture and Lightning’s favorite sweater slung over the top of a chair. She was home.   
“Serah?” she called, getting up and walking over to the kitchen. “Serah, are you h—“ Lightning stopped in her tracks, staring at the wall in front of her.  
The pictures were wrong.  
She knew that set of pictures like the back of her hand, like the hilt of her sword. There was the posed shot of their parents, the one of the sisters as children playing in the pool, Serah in her graduation gown, Lightning at her commissioning ceremony. She could have drawn them out by memory.  
And they were wrong. The wrong pictures, the wrong memories, and as Light turned to look at the rest of the room, the wrong view out the window – a line of trees instead of the street outside. Lightning turned on her heel and strode quickly through what looked like her living room, down a short hallway, threw open the door on the left, and stared.

That door should have led to her bedroom. It always had. But instead of the simple white walls and dark blue bedspread she knew should have been there, the door led to a darker, larger room.  
Whatever force was playing with her here had decided to replace her bedroom with a bar. Lightning wasn’t entirely sure what that said about her. 

She entered cautiously, eyes scanning the room for signs of movement. It was fairly dark, dark wood on the walls and dark granite on the bar and dark liquor in the bottles, even though the light coming in through the high windows was white and pure. The chairs and tables were old and scarred, but well-scrubbed, and the floor was smooth rather than sticky – the proprietor obviously took pride in the place. Lightning put one hand on the back of a chair, felt the grain of the wood and the smoothness of the finish, disturbingly solid for something she was half-convinced was an illusion. 

A quiet step on the staircase across from the door had Lightning reaching for her weapon, scanning the room with a soldier’s eyes – chairs and tables could be used as cover, or obstacles, or a way to gain a height advantage, and the liquor bottles could be used as impromptu weapons. She saw a wisp of black hair, a flash of garnet-colored eyes at the stairwell.   
“Light?” Tifa moved like water between the randomly placed tables, rushing across the room to hug her friend. “Tifa, I’m… I’m glad you’re safe.” Lightning wrapped her arms around the shorter woman’s muscular shoulders, smiling slightly at the memory of another dark-haired girl she’d fought beside in a different world.   
“Are you…” Tifa pulled back slightly, brushing a strand of rosy hair off her friend’s forehead. “Are you alright?”  
“…I don’t know.” Lightning looked down. “I remember falling, and looking over and watching the Rift seal itself, and then the next thing I know I woke up in my living room. Or somewhere that looked like my living room.” She looked up again, looking around. “Where is this place, anyway?”  
“Well, in the big view, I’m not sure. I think you’re right, something’s grabbing our memories of what we see as ‘home’ and recreating those places, but it’s not perfect. But this,” she pulled away enough to gesture with one hand in a sweep, taking in the entirety of the empty bar, “is Seventh Heaven. This is my place, my home base.”  
“You live in a bar?”  
“Upstairs, actually. I run the bar, and Cl—” Tifa bit off the end of the word, closing her eyes and swallowing. “Never mind,” she said. “You want something to drink?”  
“Honestly? That sounds amazing,” Lightning said, following the brunette to the bar.   
“Alright! What’s your poison?” Tifa asked, her usual smile coming back onto her face.   
“Whiskey sour, for preference.” Lightning slid onto one of the barstools and set her chin on her hand as she watched Tifa pour the drink. “I didn’t expect you to be a barkeep, to be honest.” Tifa laughed and slid the glass to her friend.   
“It’s a good job. I meet a lot of people, do a lot of talking, and I only occasionally have to kick someone’s butt. And I don’t have to hire another bouncer, I can do that on my own,” she smiled as Lightning chuckled into her drink. “And the kids go to school down the road, and –“  
“Wait, what? You have _kids_??” Lightning put the glass down with a _clink_ and stared at her with her mouth slightly open. The bar had been one thing, but children?  
“Oh! Oh, no no no,” Tifa waved her hand and laughed, “not mine. Well, not biologically? It’s a weird situation. Marlene is my friend’s daughter and she lives with us while he’s off working, and Denzel’s parents died a while back and we kind of adopted him. We’re still family,” she said, sitting down with a rum and cola in her hand, “but by choice, not blood. It’s not that uncommon in Edge and Midgar.”   
“Not exactly unheard of in Bodhum, either. You just gave me a surprise.” 

The sudden noise of the door slamming open again made Lightning turn in her seat, her hand closing around the hilt of her blade as Tifa vaulted over the bar with practiced ease. Lightning wondered for a fraction of a second how often she’d had to do that, even as she drew her weapon and walked between the chairs toward the intruder. She almost walked into a table when she recognized the man in the blue jacket.   
“Laguna?”  
“Hey, Light! How’s it going?” He smiled at her, easy and bright as always, throwing his arms around her shoulders. She huffed a quick laugh and hugged him back.   
“Still figuring things out, to be honest. Glad to see you safe, though – and I’m surprised you didn’t get lost on the way here.”  
“Weeellll, only a few times. Got back on the right track eventually.” He pulled back and grinned at her. “I took the scenic route, you know?”   
“Again,” she said as she punched him gently in the shoulder.   
“All that wandering must have made you thirsty,” Tifa laughed as she walked back behind the bar. “Want something?”   
“Ahh, Tifa, good to see you too! This is your place?” He plopped down onto one of the stool at the bar, arms crossed on the dark granite. “Hmmm, got the stuff for a strawberry daiquiri back there?” Lightning quirked an eyebrow and gave him a look from the side.   
“Sure thing, one daiquiri coming right up,” Tifa said with a grin, turning to grab a clean shaker. Lightning rolled her eyes and hid a smile behind her drink as Laguna downed half the mix in one go, then grabbed his temples, moaning in pain.   
“Aaaaggggh, my _head _! Tifa, what’s in that stuff, liquid nitrogen?”  
“Press your tongue up against the roof of your mouth – oh, don’t give me that look,” Tifa said, hands going to her hips, “you think you’re the first guy to get brain freeze off my drinks? Sounds weird, but trust me, it works.” __

__After Laguna had vanquished his headache, he leaned forward, placing his elbows on the bar. “So, do we have any idea what’s going on here? I came out of my office, expecting to hit a hallway and instead I found you two.”  
“Interesting,” Lightning replied. “I woke up in my house, but the door that should have led to my bedroom took me here instead. There were things that were wrong with the house, though, so I know it’s not _really _my home. Still, I wonder.”  
“There’s definitely something off about these places,” Tifa said, swirling the melting ice in her glass. “I know this bar top to bottom, and though it’s nothing major, there’s tiny little things that are out of place – glasses in the wrong spot, bottles of stuff I never bought, different brand of shaker. Little things like that, but it’s not my bar – it’s like someone’s recreating it from memory or something.”   
“Memory…” Laguna said quietly. “None of us had our memories until now, we were struggling to find them and only got bits and pieces before the end. Now they’re returned to us in all their painful glory, but I wonder where they were in the meantime. Wonder if something built these places from those memories…”  
“Painful?” Lightning said in a quiet tone. She hadn’t expected pain or sorrow to make up much of Laguna’s past, not from the way he acted, but the man closed his eyes for a moment before staring down into the pink-tinged empty glass.  
“I have a son,” he said simply. “He was there with us. He’ll still be there next time. And I didn’t know till I got here who he really was.” In the silence after that announcement, Tifa’s bitter sigh echoed against the walls.   
“There’s a man I ran into there a few times. Blonde hair, blue eyes, sword like a detached helicopter rotor. Doesn’t smile with his mouth, but it’s in his eyes. In another world, I’ve loved him since we were teenagers. Here,” the glass clinked on the granite as she set it down, her mouth twisting, “here, he’s fighting on Chaos’ side. And I didn’t know either.”   
Lightning caught her breath as she drew the glass away from her lips. She was one of the only ones to have had no connection to anyone else there – Jecht and his son, Zidane and Cecil with their brothers, and now Laguna and Tifa – but did that mean that nobody from her old life had ever been there? Had Fang and Vanille fallen in some earlier war? Did Snow or Sazh ever stand before Cosmos and pledge their loyalty? Or Hope, and what if Serah…  
“There’s gotta be something we can do,” she said, a hint of a steel blade coming into her voice. “We can’t just leave them all. We have to find a way back, to keep fighting.”  
“Is that even possible?” Tifa said. “I mean, for all we know, we’re dead.”   
“Well, if the afterlife involves drinks with pretty ladies, I for one am not complaining,” Laguna said with a teasing smile, “but for what it’s worth, I agree with Light. Let’s see if we can find a way outta here – before we run out of rum.”  
“Alright, but how?” Lightning said. “There’s not much in the way of information here.”   
“Heh, leave that to me,” he said, jamming one thumb into his chest before sliding off the barstool and walking to the door. “You’ve got to see what’s in my office.”___ _

____The two women followed him to the door, which now opened onto a well-lit, brightly decorated room with a large desk sitting at one end. Lightning skimmed the titles on the papers scattered on the desk – there appeared to be an even mix of normal, bureaucratic government topics and left-field things like time travel, magic and space flight. Messy and unorganized, unrelated topics scattered and pushed around – she thought it was a pretty good representation of Laguna’s mind in general. The centerpiece of the room, however, was the massive screen on the wall, with a control panel covered in input buttons just below it. Lightning had a feeling she knew what this was; she’d used more streamlined versions of it for most of her adult life.  
“Laguna,” she said, wide-eyed as her fingers brushed the chrome on the side of the screen, “is this – “   
“You bet your buns it is,” he said with a grin, his hands dancing over the buttons as the screen flashed to life. “Dunno what you call ‘em where you ladies come from, but you can find just about anything you can imagine on the public networks – anything from history to conspiracy theories to articles on theoretical magic. And I’ll bet,” he said as he leaned back and watched the search results loading, “we can find a way to get outta this place and back into the fight.”   
“It’s just a matter of asking the right questions, then?” Tifa asked, leaning against the desk. Lightning gave her a slight smile as she settled into the chair behind the desk.   
“Sounds like it. So let’s get to asking.”_ _ _ _


End file.
